Carter Stegall from Running Foxes Petroleum can to discuss buying right of way to put in pipeline. They need to drill under a road and wanted to know what issues there were with going under roads. Marty Pearson said that they would be responsible to fill in any settling the happens afterwards. Commissioner Warren suggested a type of mix that had a good history of not sinking.

There was a discussion of what type of permits would be needed and if a bond was needed

The water district has voted to close Cedar Creek Lake to vehicles and take the bathroom out because of too much vandalism.  It will still be open for fishing, but people will have to walk down to the lake and the dock will be removed.. The plan is to move the bathroom to Elm Creek Lake.

Ron Center from the landfill came to discuss a request to the state about going 10 foot higher in the landfill. There are some changes that need to be made to meet the state requirements. Mr. Center has a flat fee bid for $1000 to do the work that is required.

The Commissioners were asked if the press release detailing the status of the tax sale had been created and they said they were waiting on Dan Meara.

They were also asked about the status of the request for a listing of the people who had overpaid and underpaid as determined by the audit. Joanne Long said that this information had been emailed to Fort Scott Biz, and the Commissioners indicated that the Treasurer was going to start sending out refund checks for the approximately $800 that had been overpaid. They pointed out that $300 was the Treasurer’s overpayment.

The commissioners voted to go into executive session for 30 minutes to discuss non-elected employees.

Joanne Long clarified that the approximately $1.5 million spent on healthcare for county employees included about $800,000 of employee contributions. So the total amount spent on health care per county employee is around $7,000–not $15,000 as was previously suggested.

There was some discussion about the need to purchase a used truck. A suitable truck has been located, but it was slightly more expensive than expected. Marty said that the cost of used trucks is very high that this one represented one of the best deals he could find. They are going to check to see if the truck is still available.

The crusher has been moved to the new quarry. The county is working on making sure the brakes are good and all the equipment is ready to begin operation. People are coming in to train county employees on the new equipment. There was some concern that there were some maintenance issues with the loaders so it was discussed the need to have a backhoe available as a backup plan if the loaders were down when the training was taking place.

There was a firm coming in to discuss the possibility of building a new jail at 9:45. (I wasn’t able to stay for that part of the meeting.)

There was also a planned discussion of the new sewer district, planned for later in the morning.

The map below shows properties that are on the list for the Bourbon County Tax Sale. Properties are being redeemed by their owners so some of the properties on the list may have already been redeemed. The Bourbon County website has a list that is more up-to-date. Also it is possible that some of the properties didn’t get geo-encoded correctly so they may not show up as expected. The locations are probably close, but not all of the mapping information is accurate so it probably wouldn’t be wise to use this map as a basis for bidding or not bidding on a piece of property.

There area lot of properties to show, so you may need to zoom in to view the details. Clicking on a red marker will give you the address of the property and give you a link to see just that property on a map.

If you are reading this in an email, you may want to click on the link for “View Larger Map” to see the details or visit FortScott.Biz directly.

View Larger Map

Matt Harris on Indian Road has a spot right in front of his house where the water is running over the road when we get a lot of rain. He is concerned that the way the water is flowing is coming up around his house.

There was some discussion about the vacation policy for the people working on road & bridge crews. Too many employees are taking vacation all at the same time–particularly at the end of the year. Marty is also concerned that some employees are wearing improper footwear.

Allen Warren made a motion to go into executive session with Marty to discuss non-elected personnel issues (not related to vacation or attire).

At 10 am, the budget amendment hearing started. Employee benefits and road and bridge are expected to exceed the budget. The proposal was to adjust the budget to meet the expected expense. In order to avoid a budget violation the Commissioners will move some money from the general account where they had more income than expected to the accounts where they spent more. Exceeding the budget without amendment would put the county in violation of state law.

All objections were heard and a motion was made an passed to accept the amendment to the budget.

There was some discussion about the increase in employee benefits and if there was a plan to keep the cost of insurance from continuing to climb. The amended budget for health insurance in 2011 totals $1,557,560. With 100 paid county employees this works out to over $15,000 per employee. Some employees do not take county insurance, so the actual cost per employee is higher. (It was unclear if this figure includes the amounts that employees contribute to cover their families.)

The commissioners expressed concern that since they have not given raises for the past four years, health insurance is one of the main reasons people will work for the county. Chairman Endicott said, it is hard to get people to apply for jobs as it is.

The Commissioners were asked if there was a long term plan for dealing with the increasing costs of employee benefits. They said there wasn’t. They were also asked if the plan was to just raise the mill levy as needed to cover the increased costs of employee benefits. The Commissioners asked if there were any suggestions for dealing with other increases such as gas prices pointing out that other costs were going up as well.

There was some discussion about capping the amount that the county spends on employee benefits.

This is the first payroll that the county has done direct deposit. Employees that work in the court house will get the receipts for their payroll check in the office, but the ones that don’t work in the court house will get it in the mail.

The County Attorney (Terri Johnson) clarified that the attorney that the AG office did get the first letter requesting that they look into allegations against the County Treasurer. The letter that they didn’t receive was the second letter where the AG’s office had requested additional information from the County Attorney.

Dan Meara has yet to provide the list of people who have property that could be sold, but will be held off because it wasn’t published correctly. The Commissioners asked the Clerk’s office to request the lists from Dan Meara for the meeting on January 6th.

FortScott.biz has previously requested a copy of the list showing which property owners overpaid and which underpaid on their taxes. This information is not in the Commissioner’s hands so they could not provide it. FortScott.Biz took the position that the data belonged to the county and that the whether the physical bits reside shouldn’t matter and if it was simply a matter of requesting the data from Terry Sercer, it should be subject to a Kansas Open Records Act Request.

Terri Johnson (County Attorney) has contacted the Attorney Generals office to find out if there is any reason not to release the data and if it is indeed subject to KORA. She said that she thinks that list doesn’t actually belong to the County, but that they can request it. She suggested that the Commissioners need to request that information eventually in order to refund people who overpaid. She also pointed out that if the information is published the community needs to be careful not to vilify citizens who may have underpaid even though they were acting in good faith and paying what they had been told they owed.

According to the audit report by Mr. Sercer, most individuals on the payment plan overpaid their interest by $800. Now that the County is aware of this error, it would seem that they would be required to send refund checks to the individuals who paid too much in interest.

It doesn’t appear that this has happened. The information about who overpaid is not in the report. It would be part of the details of the audit. These details have not been made available because they have not be requested from Mr. Sercer. The Commissioners, who ordered the audit, are hesitant to request the audit details because they feel that the Attorney General’s office may conduct an investigation and the release of the audit details would compromise the investigation.

On the other hand, the county has something of an obligation to quickly give people their money back if they were charged interest they did not owe. Even if this isn’t a legal statute it is surely an ethical requirement. In some situations, it might just be a matter of taking the overpaid interest and applying it to any outstanding tax bill for current years, but in others it may be a matter of issuing someone an $800 check.

Without the audit details, it is impossible to know who needs a refund, but there are some complicated scenarios that may to arise.

First, if someone has overpaid in the past, how is that money applied to other delinquent taxes? It would seem that their interest would need to be recalculated to keep from penalizing them for money they had been incorrectly charged.

Second, if someone is owed money due to an incorrect calculation by the county, they may be entitled to receive interest on that money. Federal taxes have a provision where the IRS can owe tax payers interest in certain situations and their may be a similar state laws.

The third scenario that may complicate things for the county involves a tax payer who has overpaid on the payment plan, but currently has property in the process of being prepared for sale for other unpaid taxes. If they have money owed them by the county and the property is sold, what happens to the extra money? If the amount was more than what they owed (unlikely), then the county would be in the position of foreclosing on someone who had paid all their taxes.  If it is for less, then the county would be in the postion of foreclosing on someone without telling them how much they actually owed.

Now it is impossible to say if anyone is in any of these situations or not. At this point, Mr. Sercer and his firm are the only ones who have the information, but it seems like it would be in the best interest of the county to make  the details public before that tax sale. Otherwise there is a chance that it will put the county into a very tricky position.

 

 

County Landfill

There was some discussion about the issues with people dumping the wrong materials at the landfill with roll off loads. The problem is that the workers can’t really see the entire load until it gets dumped. Construction and demolition waste is charged at a lower rate and is handled differently, but if regular trash gets dumped in the C&D pile it becomes a big problem to deal with.

The commissioners discussed making all rolloffs pay the trash price. They also talked about making rolloffs go to Arcadia.  Marty is going to call the state and see what options exist. He questioned why they can accept furniture and fiberglass boats as C&D, but not clothes.

Gas Usage

Gas usage for January through November has been 127,443 gallons. Last year it was 185,807 gallons at this point. Even though the average cost has gone from $2.497 in 2010 to $3.365 in 2011, the county has spent $35,190.51 at this point

Radios

There was some talk about trying to work with the city to buy radios at the same time. Keith Jeffreys said the county has been trying to coordinate with the city to get better purchasing power.

There was some discussion about how to make sure that the radios are compatible between the city and the county. There is a requirement to switch to a new type of radio that uses a narrow band spectrum, but the new radios and the old radios are not compatible. Because of this the county and the city need to make the transition at the same time.

The county pays $50,000 per year from the 911 funds for the city to handle dispatch for the county.

Budget Hearing

The commissioners scheduled a budget hearing December 30th at 10am. This may involve making minor changes to the budget to balance between accounts that might be slightly overbudget with those that are underbudget.

Fence Viewing

The commissioners passed a motion that the fence they viewed was not sufficient to keep cattle in and that both land owners on either side should share the cost of putting in a new fence.

Sewer District

The engineer had a few issues that needed to be discussed and decided on. There are two and possibly three grinder pumps at the lake that are installed too high for the home owner to connect to them. The engineer said that in those cases the grinder pump was placed where the homeowner or their representative specified to put it. They previously lowered Leon Culvertson’s in the past, but it cost $1,000. Some of the remaining ones are likely to cost $1,800.

The engineer feels that the contractor did what they were supposed to do based on the plan and what the homeowner specified. He said the commissioners need to decide if the cost is to be absorbed into the project or if it needs to be billed to the homeowner. He said that every additional $1,000 spent will cost about 2.8 cents per homeowner per month.

Commissioner Warren asked if it was the engineer’s responsibility to know where the sewer line came out. The engineer pointed out that there wasn’t a way for him to know where every sewer pipe comes out of every house. Commissioner Endicott said that if they knew where the holding tank was, why couldn’t that be used to determine how deep the grinder pump should be placed. The engineer pointed out that some of these were buried up to 5 feet deep.

Part of the problem is that some of the homeowner’s plumbers recommended specific places to put the grinder pump saying that it would work and after it was dug, they found out that it wouldn’t.

The sewer bill is estimated to be around $37.00 per month which is less than what had originally been projected.

The houses where there is a problem, some of the sewer lines coming out of the house are lower than where they need to go into the grinder pumps. A homeowner mentioned that since the engineer and contractor observer approved the location of the ginder pumps it seems like it should be their responsibility to move them. The engineer pointed out that when you start building things underground there is always going to be a risk associated with things that you can’t see until you dig.

The Commissioner’s decided to go ahead and do what needs to be done to make it operable and charge it to the project.

There were some questions about how to handle the short term financing of the overages and asked if the county could front the additional cost for 3 to 6 months until the longer term finances come into place. It was estimated that this would be $50,000 to $75,000. This would keep the county from needing to issue temporary bonds which would incur a cost.

There are some individuals who are refusing to connect. The holding tanks can’t be demolished until they are connected. Terri Johnson said that if they still refuse to connect after a certain date, it may be a matter of using police power to force the connection.

The engineer said that in at least once situation, the cost of hooking up is going to be very expensive so the county may need to front that money. The engineer said that a few homeowners appear that they are going to fight hooking up to the sewer until they are forced. The engineer doesn’t want to tie up the construction workers if they can’t finish demolishing the tanks.

Commissioners discussed a budget report. There will be a budget hearing at the December 30th commission meeting.

The audit performed by Mr. Sercer cost Bourbon County $8,150. This was the audit that resulted in his report we published in October.

Ron Center came to talk to the commissioners about roll off containers at the dump. Someone came in with a roll off container and the whole thing was full of trash. He had put the load down as C&D which is a lower rate. He said people are dumping things at the lower rate knowing that it needs to be at the higher rate.  He said that the county isn’t breaking even at the dump. He said March was the only month where they weren’t in the red.

He also talked about how they need some type of loader out at the dump. He is concerned that the land field money was used to buy a skid loader years ago and it was never used at the landfill.

The commissioners talked about the need to raise prices at the landfill, but were concerned that if the prices are too high, people will just dump trash in the ditches.

A citizen came in to point out that there aren’t many places in town where you can get rid of used oil.

Ron Grey and several members of the sheriff office came in. Sheriff asked to go into executive session for 10 minutes to discuss non-elected personel matters.

The Susan Quick (Bourbon County Treasurer) said the the court fees have been set for the sale at $250 per parcel. There isn’t a tax sale date yet. Mr. Meara said he can’t set a date yet.

A tax payer came in to pay his taxes on the second. He paid for 2006 and 2007 before the paperwork had been filed in court. The Treasurer was asking if he needed to pay all of the remaining taxes including the $250 court fee or if the individual can partially redeem their property by paying the 2006 and 2007 taxes.

Mr. Endicott said that all of the properties need to be treated the same. The Treasurer was fine with that, but wanted to make sure the decision came from the Commissioners.

She asked the Commissioners if Mr. Meara could give them a date for the sale so she can tell people when it will occur.

John Scott asked if it had been determined whether the grinder pumps had a 2 or 5 year warranty. Chairman Endicott said that it was 5 years even though the instruction manual states it is only a 2 year warranty.

The Commissioners left at 10:45 to do a fence viewing in Franklin TWP. The Commissioners will declare which part of the fence needs to be maintained by which land owner.

Below are two lists of property owners from 2008 and 2009 who had unpaid taxes (at the time this report was run) but were not properly published in the paper. Since the bid off process was not started, the county has never begun the redemption period so the properties will not be able to go to auction until the redemption period has expired from the date that the properties are published in the paper. As Mr. Meara has pointed out, given the interest rate, there would be no economic benefit to delay payment on these taxes.

Since the point in time that this list was created from the computer system, several individuals have come in and paid their taxes. Others may do so before the list is actually published in the paper. Those properties will not be listed when the publication does occur, so it should be expected that whatever is eventually published would only be a subset of the names listed here.

These two lists are fro 2007 taxes that should have been published in 2008 and 2008 taxes that should have been published in 2009.  Mr. Meara has a similar list of properties that were not published when they should have been in 2007 for 2006 taxes. In last weeks meeting he said there were 17 to 25 names on that list.  The clerks office said that Mr. Meara has another list from 2007 taxes that should have been published in 2008, however he did not mention those numbers at the commissioner’s meeting unless they were included in the 17 to 25 count.

2008

• Adams, Keshon
• Allen Contracting Co
• Auxier, David
• Bolling, Austin W
• Bower, Jason D x 2
• Bowman, Jonathan Dru & Cynthia
• Church, Carla D
• Cook, Kenneth D FS lot ($224.99)
• Delaney, Ronald L
• Derr, Jake
• Fleeman, Carl Wayne
• Foss, Earl x 2
• Foster, Libby x 2
• Harvest Ministries x 2
• Hemphill, Bruce E
• Home Solutions Partners x 2
• Kline Products of KS Inc
• Linker, Raymond C
• Loly, Elva
• May, Frances I
• McGinnis, Bonnie FS07367
• McPherson, August
• Meeks, Justin x 2
• Paulk, George
• Pulliam, Frank D
• Quick, Rodger M
• Quick, Thomas D
• Reed, Larry
• Robison, Charles W
• Schaub, Troy J x 2
• Sharp, Ruth P
• Tinsley, Mike x 2
• Weddle, Marvin A
• White, Vance & Christine
• Wilson, Clint A

2009

Tax Sale

The county has compared the list of people who owe taxes from 2008 and 2009 who were not published in the paper and still have unpaid taxes. There were 35 names from 2008 and 50 from 2009. Some of the names have multiple properties. One has 8 properties with unpaid taxes. There are a total of 43 properties from 2008 and 75 from 2009 that were not published and still had unpaid taxes when the report was run. During the commission meeting several properties were identified where the taxes had been paid since the report had been run.

Since the publication in the newspaper is what triggers the bid off, the properties have yet to start the redemption period. For homestead property, this is three years from the date of publication. For non-homestead property the redemption period is two years.

Attorney General & County Treasurer

The commissioners have not heard anything back from the Attorney General about the investigation into the allegations against the Bourbon County Treasurer. Their understanding was that the Attorney General’s office would get back to them and let them know if it was going to be pursued further or not. They expected to have heard something back by now, but pointed out that with all the other things the Attorney General deals with, this might not be the highest priority.

Are the overpaid taxes being refunded?

Currently the commissioners do not have a copy of the details that Terry Sercer compiled. They only have the report which we posted here. Typically the county refunds overpayments for other types of fees if it is more than $5.

The commissioners are hesitant to request the information from Mr. Sercer until they hear back from the Attorney General. If the Attorney General is pursuing an investigation, they don’t want to have information released to the public that could compromise his efforts.

Is there any effort to pursue recovering the taxes/interest that was not charged correctly? (Under KSA 79-1703).

Not at this point, but this couldn’t be done until the Attorney General is finished with his investigation.

Is it possible to get the details of the audit report?

The details showing which properties have over paid and which properties have underpaid their interest is not something that the Commissioners currently have. The Commissioners don’t want to request this information from Mr. Sercer until they hear back from the Attorney General.

Has there been any effort to ask the Attorney General about the status?

Chairman Endicott wasn’t sure of the date, but said that within the past few weeks Terri Johnson (County Attorney) called to ask the Attorney General’s office about the status and was told that they didn’t have any record of a request for an investigation on the matter. She sent them another copy of the letter and then followed up with them. Again they did not have any record of the request.  She faxed it to them and immediately called them back and they then confirmed that they had received it.

Rock Quarry

There was some discussion about how to move the registration from the former rock quarry to the new quarry and also some discussion about the blasting at the new facility.

Sewer District

John Scott is going to use his house as a distribution point for the manuals and warranty information for the grinder pumps in the new sewer district. He was concerned because the paper work said it was a 2 year warranty, but when they were deciding which pumps to buy they selected the more expensive pumps because they had a longer warranty.

There is one home where the grinder pump is coming into a basement too high and there was some discussion about how to go about getting it fixed.

Misc

At least two commissioners are going to the Neosho County rock quarry to view their operation at 9am. They will also be at the Airport Advisory meeting at 12 noon on Tuesday.

An individual asked if they were going to pave 180th street. He said there were a lot of dump trucks coming through and tearing it up.

Mr. Meara came through with a cart with all the tax foreclosure cases. He was taking them up to file in court. He wanted to show he commissioners what 193 foreclosure cases looked like.

Potholes

Jennifer Miller-Connet works for Fort Scott broadcasting and lives in Vernon County. She says she was headed into Bourbon County at 4 am to open Radio Shack up for Black Friday. She hit potholes that caused $803 worth of damage near the state line. She feels like as a tax payer the road should have been taking care off. She said there was no way to drive around the holes.

Chairman Endicott asked how many miles were on her car. She said 125,000 miles and that the car is a low riding Mazda Protege. She felt that there should be some type of compensation from the county. The commissioners said that she should file an insurance claim and the insurance company would make a determination.

Roads

The commissioners decided to buy 50 culverts from Judy’s Iron and Metal. The rock crusher came in Monday. They are looking at getting a couple Ricoh G700 SE GPS cameras to give to the road crews to take photos of things that can be placed on the GPS maps. The cost of the two cameras will come to $2,901. The county has sold some data to a mapping company so the funds are available for the purchase.

They are also planning on buying a label gun to put labels on signs so if one is found in the ditch, the county will know where it came from.

The date for the lawsuit related to the sewer district has been bumped back. The County Attorney pointed out that this is an existing case–not a new lawsuit. They date has been bumped back as further discovery is done and it is expected that it won’t actually go to court until next year.

Tax Sale

Mr. Meara came back at 10:30. Defendants of foreclosure lawsuits that live in KS will be notified by the sheriff. Defendants out of state will be notified by certified letter. Everything has been filed that Mr. Meara was given that was possible to file. He is going to give the commissioners a list of the properties that have not yet been published and that he was unable to file. Those will need to be published. There may be some from 2008 and 2009 that need to be published as well.

Mr. Meara said there were 17 to 25 properties that were not published in 2007. He said that it was probably just an oversight on the part of the Treasure’s office and that there didn’t appear to be any pattern. They did not appear to all be payment plan properties.

Terri Johnson (County Attorney) said it appears that the redemption period starts at the date of publication and that the publication must occur for the property to be property “bid off.” So properties that were not published for 2007 taxes will need to be published before the three year redemption period can begin. Commissioner Endicott said that it didn’t seem right that someone could have not paid their taxes for three years and then they get another three years if they were left out of the publication. The law does allow for there to be errors and omissions in the publication. However, this allowance seems to be more aimed at preventing people from saying their property was improperly foreclosed on due to a printing smudge or mistake and may offer less protection for the county if proper procedure wasn’t followed.

Partial redemption cannot be invoked once the county files the foreclosure. So once the county files the foreclosure paperwork, those properties must have their taxes, fees, and interest paid in full in order to avoid a tax sale.

There was some discussion as to whether or not a non-homestead property could be partially redeemed before the county files for foreclosure. The scenario would be a business that had unpaid taxes since 2007 that paid their 2007 taxes in order to remove it from foreclosure lawsuits that Mr. Meara filed this morning. The statutes appear to only mention partial redemption under the section that applies to homestead properties. The other sections seem to indicate that once a property is bid off to the county, the entire amounted owed on that property must be paid in order to avoid foreclosure. It appears that non-homestead properties have been allowed to partial redemption in the past and the attorneys were not clear if the statues indeed prohibit partial redemptions for non-homestead properties. They are going to look into it to see.

Clarifications

The lawsuit summons from last week was not a new lawsuit.

Executive sessions

Back in October, we looked at whether or not an executive session was illegal. Part of the argument was that attorney client privilege can only be used when no one other than the client is present.  The County Attorney gave me a copy of Attorney General Opinion 92-56. The opinion relates to KPERS, but it does establish that the “client” can include any employee or elected official off the county.

With regard to whether KPERS staff or investment managers may be present in an executive session called pursuant to K.S.A. 75 – 4319(b)(2), K.S.A. 60-426 addresses the attorney client privilege and subsection (c) of that statute recognizes that this privilege may extend to staff or officials of a corporate client. K.S.A. 74-4903 creates the KPERS as “a body corporate. . . .” Thus, KPERS staff meet the definition of client. Such staff may therefore be permissibly present during an executive session without destroying the attorney-client privilege.

So the executive session was legal from the standpoint of falling within attorney/client privilege and our suggestion that the County Treasurer  wasn’t allowed in the meeting was based on a misunderstanding of whether Attorney Dan Meara was representing the Commissioners or the County. Since he is representing the County, any County employee or official can be present.

Special thanks to County Attorney Terri Johnson for taking the time to explain this and point out the section of the Attorney General’s Opinion.

Unpaid Taxes

On November 15th, we looked at some of the other forms of unpaid taxes in the county. I had a few people point out that some of the businesses listed with unpaid taxes have been sold and are owned by different owners now. So don’t stop supporting someone just because the business name is on the list. It might be the previous owners who didn’t remit their sales tax to the state.